Tag: sous vide cooking

Today I saw an interesting piece of sous vide cooking equipment called Chef Touch System from KitchenAid. This concept gather a vacuum chamber sealer (a must in terms of vacuum that gives you the possibility to add liquids such as oil or a marinade in you pouch without destroying the machine) a shock freezer (very usefull and safe device if you want to keep meats in the freezer after you cooked it at low temperature) and a steam oven.

The concept of this all in one sous vide equipment gives an idea of what could look our kitchen in a close futur. The only weak point of this beautiful item is the steam oven. Why not replacing it with a PID controlled steared water bath?

Any idea of the price of the Chef Touch System and availability?

Information added October 23rd :

Thanks to N.Lavirotte, we now know the ChefTouch System is available since September in Europe. Official retail price are as follow :

I received several questions of people interested by the swid of addelice. Their main worry was to determine if the swid is for professional purposes or for home cooks. To all of them I replied and said that I am not a professional and therefore don’t know their expectations as a professional. I realized that I tried the swid in 3.5 litres and 8.5 litres pots only. The manual of the swid indicates that the stability of the temperature is optimized up to 20 litres.

I went inside my uncle cellar and found an Ikea plastic box (€ 3) that I filled with 20 litres water.

I had to face a problem with the plastic container which is very flexible. Attaching the swid with the clamp to the container was not possible as the swid was too heavy. Therefore I found a glass cutting board that was perfectly the hight of the container. I put this board between the plastic container and the clamp. This generated an excellent stability for the swid to be attached.

I set the swid at 55°C only because I am not realy trusting in the Ikea container that could melt or not resit to higher temperatures. The manual of the swid indicates the Adaptive PID controller (that assesses the amount of the water i n the pot) was optimized if the starting temperature is at least 15°C lower than the target temperature. It took 15 minutes to heat the water from 25°C to 55°C and, after 5 more minute,s the stability of the water bath was excellent.

I decided to make an addition test: immersing a bottle of cold water (3°C) simulating a cold pouch in a water bath.

It worked perfectly.

To sum up I confirm the swid thermal circulator can heat easily a 20 litres water bath.

We are also waiting for the launch of addélice immersion circulator (the Swid) that should be vailable in some days (addélice postponed several time the launch of the Swid but told me some days ago that it should be available within one week. For the record, the Swid should be at EUR 449 incl VAT and sending costs!

This is my first try with cooking shellfish sous vide : a lobster tail.

I looked at Thomas Keller’s time and temperature table which mentioned a cooking temperature at 60°C during 15 minutes for a lobster tail. I am realizing more and more that Baldwin’s Sous Vide Guide is very practical. The information about the thickness is key. Douglas Baldwin indicates a 20 mm shellfish is pasteurized at 60.5°C at the condition being cooked during 41 minutes. I have decided to follow Douglas’ recommendations.

I took off the shell and seasoned the lobster tail with salt, pepper and a frozen teaspoon of “extra vierge” olive oil. After cooking I seared the lobster tail some seconds in a skillet with some olive oil.

The result was very good. The flesh of the lobster was moist and had a very pleasant flavour of olive oil.

I was not really convinced after my first 42 hours sous vide pork ribs trial. The meat was tender but the texture was not as extraordinary as you can read it on some internet comments made by cooks who experimented 42 hours pork ribs.

I therefore decided to cook sous vide pork ribs for 72 hours.

The result was fantastic and, this time, I have to admit the texture of the pork really changed compared to the 42 hours one! The meat was so tender that it was almost falling apart!